The present invention is generally related to the printing of information and more particularly to a method and apparatus essentially for delaying the printing of displayed content on a portable communications device until the device is coupled to a high capacity presentation apparatus. Reference is made to copending application for patent, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/917,010, “Presentation of Automated Personalized Television Programming with Preference Notations Using a Wireless Hand-Held Computing Device”, filed on Jul. 26, 2001 on behalf of Brown et al., which may contain related matter.
Portable and hand carried devices that link users to communication services have become increasingly popular and widespread. Cellular telephones, as an example, are routinely carried by people and are generally expected by their users to provide two way voice communication virtually anywhere. The increasing involvement people are having with the Internet (or world wide web) and other digital two way communication services at a fixed location, such as a home computer, have spurred the development of portable interconnections to the Internet. The world wide web (Web) allows users to navigate Internet resources intuitively, without using internet protocol (IP) addresses or other special technical knowledge. The Web is made up of interconnected “web pages”, or web documents. These pages are accessed with the use of a web “browser”. The Web uses a transfer method known as “http” (Hypertext Transfer Protocol). One format for information transfer is to create documents using Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). HTML pages are made up of standard text as well as formatting codes that indicate how the page should be displayed. A browser reads these codes in order to display the page. Each web page may contain graphics, video, and audio information in addition to text. Hidden behind certain text, pictures, or sounds are connections, known as “hypertext links” (“links”), to other pages within the same server or on other computers within the Internet. Each link is directed to a web page by a Uniform Resource Locator (URL). A user may also specify a known URL by writing it directly into the command line of a web browser.
Cellular telephones are being produced with features that encourage connection to and are compatible with the Internet. Likewise, developments in personal digital assistants (PDAs) have moved these products from mundane calendaring devices to nearly full-capability computing devices. Synchronization between a PDA and a user's full-capability computer (or computer network) provides an opportunity for e-mail to be downloaded to the PDA, calendar and schedule changes to be recorded, and other updates to be made to information stored in the PDA. The PDA user may then, at leisure, review the updated information. Like PDAs and cellular telephones, pagers and paging devices are also experiencing enhanced digital capabilities leading to interfaces with the Web.
When compared to the high capacity communications and presentation capacity of a user's personal computer system, the foregoing portable devices can be viewed as limited-capacity presentation apparatuses. A user can download a web page from a server coupled to the Web and then print the web page. However, a portable device typically has limited storage space, display size, and communication speed that can hinder the ability to efficiently display and print full length, rich content generally encountered from the Web. Nevertheless, portable devices offer radio frequency interconnection to an internet service provider (ISP) thence to the Web and have been provided the capability of receiving content when the user is logged-on. This content is then displayed on a limited capacity screen. The information shown can be a truncated or summarized version of a full length story, compressed to fit the limited capacity screen. Additionally, subscribers to news services and the like can have late breaking news stories e-mailed to their fixed computer system, which has a comparatively non-limited capacity memory and display screen.
Further, portable devices (especially PDAs) are often equipped to allow printing from the portable device to a printer via an infrared (IR) link. The print driver on a typical PDA exists as a separate non-integrated application that prints documents residing in the PDA. The richness, as well as the number, of large-sized documents that can be printed from the PDA is limited by the relatively low storage capacity of PDAs. In addition, delivery of very large-sized documents to PDAs (especially through a wireless connection) is slow and thus not well accepted.